By Harriet Denz Penhey

Dr Harriet Denz-Penhey is an internationally recognized health researcher who has done groundbreaking research into patient self care in serious illness.

There is some really important research coming out in the biomedical journals that few people ever make the time and effort to read. This is a pity because it has a direct impact on how doctors should support you and treat you when you get sick.

You have to remember that doctors are very busy and have to make a living like any other single person or family out there in the community. Doctor’s aren’t paid for staying up to date with the medical literature and there are literally thousands of medically related articles being published each month. No self-respecting doctor could ever keep up. They have to rely on others to feed them with what is important. Most of the research feeders are the drug companies and they don’t pass on other important research which doesn’t improve their profits.

This new research includes a new understanding at what is happening at a molecular level in the cells of your body in the two areas of oxidation and inflammation.

Most people interested in health will have heard of antioxidants and how they help deal with the oxidized products from your cells. These can bounce around in the system and damage cell walls and DNA. However oxidation is needed. If your food wasn’t oxidized then all the cells would die of starvation and so would you! So oxidation is necessary and wonderful – we just need to manage the products well. This is why antioxidants like Vitamin’s A, C & E are needed.

The new finding I want to bring to your attention is that a large amount of damage done by inflammation. Again inflammation has a good purpose – it is the second very important way that the body deals with infections, poisons and trauma (the first being those white cells which engulf antigens without the need for inflammation). Inflammation is when you body reacts by swelling (providing blood and the immune system to deal with the problem), redness and pain. We need the inflammatory process.

However inflammation, like oxidation has some downsides to it that need to be managed. In most cases in our lives the inflammation leads to good outcomes, to healing. The paper cut on our finger self-heals, the influenza virus is defeated after a week or three, the acne spot clears up.

But when inflammation is overwhelming or has too many components to it other pathways can occur leading to chronic diseases like arthritis, to heart disease and to cancers.

Cancer starts as cells are transformed as DNA is changed (transformation). The transformed cells are left alive and are not killed by the immune system (survival). The new cancer cells can then reproduce and eventually invade other tissues, some far from the original site (proliferation, invasion, angiogenesis, metastasis). The growths can become so strong they are resistant to chemo and radiotherapy (chemoresistance, radioresistance).

All of these pathways are known in the biomedical literature.

So what can we do to avoid the inflammation that causes this to happen? Well, frankly the biomedical journals are, for the most part, very hard to understand unless you are trained in that area but they do have some lovely gems of information in amongst the obscurities of their research.

Dr Aggarwal at the University of Texas says in one of his journal articles that inflammation is activated in response to tobacco, stress, some foods, obesity, alcohol under some circumstances, infections such as viruses and bacteria, radiation and other environmental stimuli – and I think by this he means poisons. He says that these agents account for as much as 95% of cancers.

Think about it – if those components cover some 95% of the cancers then we should be able to intervene to reduce the likelihood of the cancer occurring.

Sorry we can’t promise that we can totally stop cancer. It is rather more complex than that. However we have lots of pointers as to the bases we have to cover and the more bases we cover the less likely that the big nasty diseases creep through.

So to improve our chances of good health we need to eat nature’s natural immune enhancing foods such as the red cabbage and broccoli, onion and garlic, blueberries and other fresh vegetables and fruit. We need some of these at least a couple of times a day. We need to manage our lifestyle issues that cause stress through improved self and work management, exercise and learning good relaxation techniques. It also helps to avoid taking in poisons wherever possible. Stop smoking and avoid second hand smoke and vehicle pollution.

What it really comes down to is that we have to make a decision to take charge of our own lives and make as many little improvements as possible. Little bit by little bit they add up. And along the way we are improving our quality of life and health not just for now but for the long term as well.